The Transformation of War by Martin Van Creveld, Martin Van Creveld, Martin Van Creveld

Transformation of Warby Anonymous

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December 16, 2006: The first reaction to this book upon finishing reading it is to commit suicide (just kidding of course). The author's reasoning is quite brilliant tracing the tribal warfare through the antiquity and its armies and motivations for war through the Middle Ages,then to the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,the Peace of Westphalia (1648) then the birth of modern states and professional armies,Napoleon followed by the Clausewitzian construct of war and thence to the rise of technology and the rise of the killing machines called modern wars culminating in Hiroshima. It is the rise of the low intensity conflicts of today on which the author bases his general prediction of the demise of the Clausewitzian world of division of society in to Government,Army and People.According to the author the world in the longer view will be confronted with the demise of states,boundaries and organized armed forces. Instead we are looking forward to informal organizations based on beliefs,and individual interests and motivation of groups.For short a chaos resembling sort of 'high tech' Dark Ages. This would bode very poorly for our world and humanity. However the author also states that future is hard to predict at any given time in history. As an example he cites that the rise of national states and armies would have been difficult to predict for a historian living in the high Middle Ages before firearms were invented. Nor would a historian living in the world of Roman Empire at its height have predicted the collapse of Rome and advent of Dark Ages. One thing which I found somewhat iffy in the author's logic was the same that I found wanting in reading Clausewitz's 'On War' was the inability to predict technological advance.Creveld's predictions of technological advances are somewhat restricted to tracking and monitoring devices-important as those are to waging low intensity conflicts.Long range predictions of technological advances are notoriously difficult. Could 18th century men have predicted the computer and subsequent communication explosion, the biological and medical advances, space travel or even simple airline travel?Not to say anything about nuclear science? While I think low intensity warfare is here to stay for some time to come, I think to predict the breakdown of states is somewhat premature. It may however be possible that an expansion of states into federations of the like minded equally progressive states is more possible. For example the European Union after all springs from Shuman's,Adenauer's and Spaak's European Coal and Iron Community of yore (1948). Conversely there is a long range possibility of the 'consolidation of the weak' such as the Islamic countries. Where all of this is headed it is difficult to predict. However Creveld's world and logic based on the author's long time association with things exclusively military allows for the inescapable conclusion of this book. Will it come to pass this way? God I hope not!I hope we are better than this. The author fogets that most men who were in combat grow to hate it, (I know I did). Other than a few man like Patton,Guderian,Rommel, Napoleon, Conde or Frederick and such do not secretly or overtly love war. Believe it. Battlefield high or low intensity is a sure fire cure for any 'love' of armed conflict.